The housing subsidy for the poorest of the poor — including the indigent, disabled and the elderly — has been raised from R28 279 to R31 900, starting in April this year.
Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu made the announcement in Pretoria — beamed by satellite to Cape Town — on Monday morning.
For those who are earning between R1 500 and R3 500 a month, the subsidy will be R29 400, requiring an own contribution of R2 479. If the recipient household cannot afforded this, then the household is expected to contribute “sweat equity” to the building project.
While Sisulu did not divulge how many subsidies are expected to be delivered, she said the target is for “the eradication” of informal housing by 2015.
Siulu said in addition to providing subsidies for new houses, “we are also in the process of assessing the houses built between 1994 and 2002”.
Houses that were shoddily built will be dealt with by taking the matter up with the developers.
From April 1, the Department of Housing will be putting in place “a series of mechanisms” to address the upgrading of houses built before March 15 1994 — the apartheid era — to bring them in line with the intentions of current human settlement plans.
The minister said she recently visited Langa township in Cape Town and was appalled by the housing that had been sold to households with the knowledge that the housing was too expensive to maintain.
Sisulu said that in consultation with Auditor General Shauket Fakie “we will be undertaking an exercise to validate the waiting lists [for housing] across the country”.
This will be done to ensure that there are consolidated lists, that there is integrity to the lists and that people have confidence in them.
“At the end of the process, the integrity of the data would be such that it can relate to the data being held by other departments such as home affairs and social development, and that we can be able to project into the future in respect of the housing needs and plan better,” she said.
“As a priority, this process will begin in the Western Cape and in Cape Town, in particular where the N2 [Gateway] Project is currently under way,” she said.
Noting that President Thabo Mbeki has given her department the task of speeding up the delivery of housing “by reversing the trend in some provinces where there has been a slowdown”, the minister said: “I am happy to announce that we are making some progress.”
She said her department’s expenditure by the end of January was up to 71%, from 58% at the same time last year. She expects spending to reach 95% by the end of the financial year, March 31. — I-Net Bridge